How long do you have to live somewhere in order to call it home? At least this summer, I'm calling Cambridge that; it wasn't an easy transition to make.

I spent a week hunting for apartments in Cambridge while finishing an independent study paper on which I had an extension, imperfectly gleaning the superficial details of John Rawls between calls 5,634 and 5,635 about whether there were washer dryer privileges, kitchen and furnishings. I ended up getting a sublet from a woman whose daughter is about to marry my former English TF.

I dashed around madly trying to see all of my graduating friends and inevitably missing a few, spent a week working for the Harvard reunions and met a completely new random cross-section of Harvard students (an experience which I highly recommend).

We trooped around to all the Boston sights term-time Harvard students never get a chance to see: the Science Museum and IMAX ("Everest" was good, but not that good), the Pops, Canobie Lake Park and the beach, 14-year-olds in tow. The whole experience left me wondering how much simpler and perhaps equally productive it would be if undergraduates, instead of producing endless papers, performances and projects, all got together and played a good game of blob-tag for half an hour.

I've been catching up on summer reading: The Name of the Rose, Hamlet, All the King's Men, stories about life among letters, the perils of indecision and politics, all somewhat relevant to the life of any 20-year-old college student.

I flew to France after that for a week on the earnings from the reunions and experienced Coup-de-Monde frenzy (minus Coupe de Monde tickets): swarms of people obsessed with nationalistic fervor in the midst of Parisian clamor--yellow face-painted Brazilians, mad Celts (I've never seen so many men in skirts in my life)--and the Eiffel Tower at night, as beautiful as its reputation claims. Breathtaking. Worth the trip.

I came back and saw my little brother graduate from high school. I flew back to Cambridge and started up my job, running the Institute of Politics' Summer in Boston program. A whirlwind of faces, thoughts, impressions: Michael Dukakis--personable, dedicated, jocular, still committed ten years later and a definite true believer. He said, "Politics is still worth getting into. You may not win, but you never know what you're going to get out of it. I lost in '88, but 50 marriages still came out of that campaign."

I met Ray Flynn, Sheila Burke, Al Simpson, participated in many spirited discussions about American people and politics and the chance to participate in the ongoing experiment of social development and choice and change.

I got a new housemate who is working with Anna Deveare Smith at the A.R.T. and suddenly received deep, unexpected and fascinating insight into life in the arts and in the artistic community.

A few afternoons ago, I stopped by my term-time place of employment, an economics research facility near Harvard, and chatted with graduate students about life there, dipping into the ever-present background buzz of academia, of which I'm constantly reminded by the legions of friends doing thesis research. Many, many lunches and dinners, the long-delayed, much-rescheduled, "we-should-have lunch" lunches, finally happening.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I must have an album by now: so many words, conversations, flowing together; though I'm not sure yet into what kind of coherent picture. The summer after junior year is a strange one, to be sure. The future is nipping impatiently at everyone, questions hovering. Yet somehow July seems to suspend the impendingness of it all. Cambridge lifts itself into a lull of the present--fascinating, at once demanding and infinitely postponable. Nothing becomes more certain; the uncertainties simply become more apparent with time. More apparent, and less troubling, ultimately. Nothing's changed: the same options still lie out on the road in front as were there first-year, second-year, third-year. Now, perhaps, they're just a little more comfortable, a bit more familiar.

A million things at once swirl around. It's been six months at least since I've been home for more than two days. It's fair to say Cambridge really has begun to feel like a home at last, perhaps oddly more so for me, having been born here. T.S. Eliot '09 said, "We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time."

Cambridge, I would venture, is a mite hard to know. But perhaps spending a summer here at least offers the opportunity to return to where we started and know ourselves for the first time. Or to begin the journey again.

Kathryn R. Markham, a senior in Adams House, is coordinating the Institute of Politics' Summer in Boston program.